EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you need to know with your morning cup of coffee.
1. #HORSE MEAT: Gardaí are now investigating the horse meat scandal as it emerged that a raw ingredient at a meat plant in Monaghan contains 75 per cent equine DNA. The Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney says that the filler material at the Rangeland Foods factory was the same that was discovered at the Silvercrest plant while Supermacs has insisted its burgers are 100 per cent Irish beef.
2. #MAGDELENE: A long-awaited report into the State’s involvement in the Magadalene Laundries is to be published later today. The inter-departmental review, chaired by senator Martin McAleese, is expected to detail just how involved the State was in the Catholic Church run institutions which incarcerated thousands of woman and girls, making them do unpaid work. Campaign groups hope that a government apology will follow the report’s publication.
3. #WEATHER: The very cold and extremely windy weather that has hit most of Ireland overnight is expected to continue today with Met Éireann forecasting frequent showers of hail, sleet and snow during the morning with blizzard conditions in some places. But there may be a few bright spells.
4. #RENDITION: A new human rights report outlines Ireland’s involvement in facilitating the CIA’ s secret detention, rendition and interrogation programmes after 9/11. The Open Society Justice Initiative has said that Ireland permitted the use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with extraordinary rendition operations including the transfer of Abd al Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombings in October 2000.
5. #ABORTION: Health Minister James Reilly is expected to give a verbal update to Cabinet today on the progress of the plans to legislate for abortion in line with the X Case, the Irish Times says. It comes amid concerns that proposed legislation will stipulate a requirement that an abortion in circumstances where the risk to life is posed by the threat of suicide must be assessed by as many as five doctors.
6. #INDIA: A court in Delhi will this morning hear the first evidence in the trial of five men accused of the gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old medical student last month, a case which sparked a worldwide outcry. All five men have pleaded not guilty in the case which has been fast-tracked through India’s courts and will hear from some 80 witnesses, according to BBC News. A sixth suspect will be tried in a juvenile court.
7. #STABBING: A man was stabbed a number of times in the chest during an altercation with another man in north Dublin last night. The incident took place at apartments on Halston Street at around 11pm last night with the man hospitalised with what are described as non-life threatening injuries.
8. #MORNING EDITION: The average audience for the first week of RTÉ’s new morning programme, Morning Edition, was 18,600 according to figures released by the broadcaster. The station says it is “delighted” with the numbers given the previous week’s broadcasts attracted on average just under 9,000 viewers.
9. #TWO-SCREENING: Speaking of telly, almost half of Irish adults are now adopting the phenomenon of ‘two-screening’ – watching TV while discussing what’s on TV on your laptop, tablet or smartphone – according to a survey by Sky. The survey finds that 70 per cent of people use Facebook to discuss what they are watching with more and more Irish internet users now also watching TV online.
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